The Books That Have Devastated Us

We present to you a list of the books that devastated us this year. That is, those books that broke our hearts, brought us to tears, down to our knees, then built us back again with the beauty of their language, their honesty, their courage. Here are some of those books, as nominated by the Entropy community:

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

The Poetics of Trespass by Erik Anderson

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Diorama by Rocio Ceron, translated by Anna Rosenwong

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

The Ghost in Us Was Multiplying by Brent Armendinger

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Notice by Heather Lewis

ARK by Ronald Johnson

Get in Trouble by Kelly Link

Women in Public by Elaine Kahn

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta

Reconsolidation: Or, it’s the ghosts who will answer you by Janice Lee

Tender Data by Monica McClure

Ongoingness by Sarah Manguso

After-Cave by Michelle Detorie

Children of the Sea by Daisuke Igarashi

Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh

Bough Down by Karen Green

Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones

Citizen by Claudia Rankine

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

The Invaders by Karolina Waclawiak

Broken Kingdoms by NK Jemisin

The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante

The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson

The Immortal Evening by Stanley Plumly

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

In the City of Shy Hunters by Tom Spanbauer

Featured Image Credit: “Manitoba: a history,” Morton.

The Books That Have Devastated Us was last modified: September 21st, 2015 by Entropy

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